To an approximate scale of 1:60

eiusdem. tenpli. et. base./ colu[m]na[rum]. no[n]. habent/ dados. subpostos. (‘of the same temple, and the bases of the columns do not have plinths beneath them’); [measurements]

• c.1513/14
  Datable to c.1513/14

Pen and brown ink and grey-brown wash over stylus lines and compass pricks

Bernardo della Volpaia

This sectional drawing of the so-called Temple of Vesta in Tivoli was almost certainly added after the two plans on the sheet were completed. It runs right up against the plan of the same building (Drawing 2) but does not interfere with it, while the annotation describes it as being of the ‘same temple’ rather than just giving its name. The section runs through the building along the main axis, slicing through the centre of the door and showing two of the peripheral columns and enough of the cella interior, rendered in perspective, to include a corner of one of the windows. The depiction of the columns, however, is inconsistent. The one nearer the front is drawn with a perspectival recession that is appropriately slight, but the one behind it is turned at an exaggerated and ungainly angle, an idiosyncrasy also seen in the sectional drawing of Bramante’s Tempietto (Fol. 22r/Ashby 34).

The temple is shown, accurately, as standing on a tall podium (extending almost to the bottom of the sheet), and as having Corinthian columns that lack plinths beneath the bases (which is remarked upon in an annotation), and then a ceiling over the peristyle at the level of the cornice that incorporates two rings of coffers. The interior is unadorned except for the window frame, and no internal roof is shown, partly because this would have interfered with the plan drawn above. There was thus no conjectural restoration involving a dome of the kind seen in an earlier drawing of the building by Giuliano da Sangallo in the Codex Barberini.

As a section, the drawing is anticipated by a late fifteenth-century depiction of the building in Vienna, although this is of the whole structure complete with a reconstructed dome, and it omits both the surviving door and the windows. A drawing in Montreal of the 1530s is like the Coner representation in being a perspectival section, although one that again shows the whole building, and it is transverse rather than longitudinal so that it includes the door and windows. In being a partial section positioned beside the plan, the Coner drawing is like others in the codex of the Temple of Portunus at Porto (Fol. 7v/Ashby 12), the Temple of Minerva Medica (Fol. 9r/Ashby 15), and Santa Costanza (Fol. 12r/Ashby 20).

OTHER IMAGES MENTIONED: [Anon. Italian A] Vienna, Albertina, inv. Egger no. 281r (Egger 1903, p. 71; Valori 1985, pp. 56–57); [Giuliano da Sangallo] Rome, BAV, Barb. lat. 4424 (Codex Barberini), fol. 42r (Hülsen 1910, 1, p. 58; Borsi 1985, p. 211; [Anon.] Montreal, CCA, Roman Sketchbook, fol. 21r

OTHER DRAWINGS IN CODEX CONER OF SAME SUBJECT: Fol. 14v/Ashby 24 (Drawing 2 on this page); Fol. 20r/Ashby 32; Fol. 53v/Ashby 92

Ashby 1904, p. 23
Census, ID 44228

Drawing

Digitisation of the Codex Coner has been made possible through the generosity of the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, Berlin.

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